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New Jersey Book of the Dead
Are named for poets-- Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, but no Allen Ginsberg, or Allen Ginsberg's father. Still, I often dream I've been left behind At the Joyce Kilmer rest stop-- I'm not wearing shoes Stand on grunge in my stocking feet And the bus has left-- An ambiguous dream bus That might mean more than one thing Or two things at once Or nothing at all-- Bus full of protestors against the war Headed south to Washington, D.C. Or a psychedelically painted hippie bus Going to Haight Ashbury without me Or not a bus at all, but a sedan Oldsmobile with my father, mother, sisters, brother Generic family That still leaves me behind. As a child, you searched for the alluvial-- Marsh, swamp, what lies beneath The highway bridge, beyond the cul-de-sac Over the concrete culvert, under the wire. There was a pond there, in the middle of woods, You waded in Waist deep, Covered in mud, Spent hours Trying to catch the snake. The snake was black, thicker than your boyish wrist, It snapped, and tried to bite. And although you usually excelled At catching things that did not want to be caught Even with a stick You could not catch this snake, Went home wet to dinner. It was only hours later, looking in a book That you realized It was a water moccasin, Deadly poisonous Shocked even your ten-year old self At how close you'd come to death. This was a world where babies were snatched From peaceful bassinets-- We were raised On the Lindbergh baby's fate. You could be alive and warm one moment, Then kidnapped the next, hit by a car, Bitten by a snake, stung by a yellow-jacket, Suffocated in a closet, smothered in a dry cleaning bag, Locked in an abandoned refrigerator. On purpose, or by mistake, the litany went on Scared me out of the skin I'd been born with Into some other kind of carapace. When the police pulled me over It took every ounce of strength I had in my body Not to leap out of the car And start running away across the neighborhood Jumping fences, crashing through hedges. Escape was hard-wired into my cells. As a middle-aged woman Thousands of miles from New Jersey I could barely wait in the car For the simple traffic citation Of failing to signal. No, this was the escape From East Berlin, or Nazis, a noir film Or just my belief That the cops would as soon Shoot as look at me. Maybe it is because of the drug dealers-- The way everyone trafficked In controlled substances-- From Phisohex to ludes to love. Girls in white lipstick dealt so much I was sure they would end up dead in a ditch But instead they became public defenders For the state of New Jersey. There was your friend, who became an anesthesiologist-- That guy, we always said, Loved knocking people out for money. But what about that other one, The one who got so paranoid He thought airplanes and helicopters Were following him personally-- There was one light in the sky In particular That followed him unrelentingly. It took him months to realize-- It was the North Star. The holy say Everything is interconnected And that's not only true, but good. Where I grew up We believed everything was connected But out to get us. One of my best friends Taught me to smoke and play poker On the off chance, she emphasized That I was captured by a motorcycle gang And needed these social skills. You talkin' to me? Are you talking to me? Do you know what I require? I hold what beats the Queen of Hearts, the Ace of Spades-- Desire. |
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Issue #26, April, 2002 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.
![[painting] detail from 'Resist Staying'](images/staying.jpg)